As a long time fan of the L-1011, I wish that it would be brought back into regular service. My question is: what about a complete revival of the beautiful L-1011? Meaning manufacturing completely new L-1011s! Maybe Tri-jets are dead, but the L-1011 has got to be the most elegant airliner ever

No question the L-1011 is a great plane,used to fly them on BA/SV/TWA and Eastern.
But sorry to say the days of Tri-jets are gone so did Lockheed.Airbus never produced a Tri-jet and Boeing only the 727.Another great Tri-jet were the McDonnell DC10 and the MD11 and they are not doing that well few passengers planes are still flying and few more are still used as cargo planes.I see no airplane manufacturer investing any money on a Tri-jet.

I agree that it was an elegant looking jet. There was a dolphin type quality to the front. The front windows were huge. I was once lucky to sit in the jump seat and it was actually a bit freaky how big the window was beside the two jump seats. The doors that slid into the ceiling, the coat racks that disappeared into the overhead and the elevator into the lower galley was all things that made it my favourite plane to fly. Although dated now the Lockheed colours were great. First time I rode it AC still had a four seater table at the front of first class where you could get served your meal.

The three man crew and the overall lack of economy made the aircraft uneconomical. Since the B767, A330 family and 777 delivery much better performance with only two engines, there isn't a snowball's chance down where the devil roams, of a resurrection.

When Lockheed ceased production of the L-1011's in the early 1980's they took a "write off" (reduction in taxes) on the entire TriStar program. To receive the "write off" Lockheed had to destroy the tooling that was used to manufacture the L-1011. Therefore, there is no possible way for Lockheed to resume L-1011 production. If they did they would be required to pay the government back the "write off" money and they would have to rebuilt the tooling. Additionally the facility used for L-1011 production has been put to other uses.

However, having said that around 1990 Lockheed was approached by a group of Russian investors about purchasing the rights to manufacture the L-1011 in Russia. While the tooling was gone the blueprints for the tooling and the aircraft were still available. Preliminary talks were held and a couple of Lockheed teams visited the proposed production site. In the end the deal did not progress any further and any chance of future production of the L-1011 was lost.

Quoting SOBHI51 (Reply 1):But sorry to say the days of Tri-jets are gone so did Lockheed.Airbus never produced a Tri-jet and Boeing only the 727.

The only way a new trijet airliner is getting built is if one of the manufacturers decide to build a BWB. Otherwise, the center engine is far too compromising for a tube-wing configuration. Hanging two bigger engines under the wing will always be easier and even with the Ge90 we're not close to the limit of turbofan engine thrust. It has been speculated that the Trent and Ge90 cores could be scaled to 150-160 klbf with confidence.

That is a new version of the Dassult 50 with only a maximum of 15 pax.
And it is used as a private plane and not an airliner.
If you want to buy one i will be more than happy to take a ride in it,and maybe Nitepilot79 can join us

Only in our dreams would another new commercial tri-jet take to the skies.

The only chance of another tri-jet would be if the regulators suddenly changed the rules and abolished/radically reduced ETOPs. In fact it think it was regulations like that, dating from the 1930s?, that gave birth to the tri-jet.

Quoting SOBHI51 (Reply 9):That is a new version of the Dassult 50 with only a maximum of 15 pax.
And it is used as a private plane and not an airliner.
If you want to buy one i will be more than happy to take a ride in it,and maybe Nitepilot79 can join us

True, but like you said "NEW" version. I'm sure that if a 777 can achieve E-Tops a business jet can also do that, but this just goes to say that some manufacturers are opting for try-jets. The 7X is not that small, even though it's only for 15 something pax.

Quoting REALDEAL (Reply 5):presume most of L1011's were pulled form service due to 2 things:-

I'd say it was really three reasons:

1. Three man cockpit
2. Inefficient when compared to the A330, 764, and 777
3. It's not just that the aircraft were becoming older, but parts were becoming hard to source. Even though Delta at one point flew 50+ L-1011s towards the end it was becoming difficult for them to get find some of the parts necessary to keep 'em flying.

Quoting Braniff722 (Reply 11):The L-1011 has about the same chance of a comeback as a 727-200 does.......SADLY!

727-300......... has such a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Boeing came very close to launching a 727-300 in the mid-1970s. They dropped the project when the intended launch customer, UA, changed their mind.

Description of the 727-300 plans about 1/3 of the way down the first page of this long (8 part) Seattle Times article from 1983 on the development history of the 757 (which, by the way, made its first flight 27 years ago next week -- February 19, 1982).http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/business/757/part01/

I'm risking the ire of the Lockheed fans here, but this is my understanding of Lockheed civil aircraft design. I'll qualify it by saying my own personal experience is flying Douglas, Boeing, Airbus and Fokker aircraft.

While the Lockheed products were all very good airplanes, they suffered from systems over-design and complexity. The Constellation, a beautiful aircraft by any definition was much more complex (some would like to say sophisticated) than the DC-6 and DC-7. Douglas airplanes up through the DC-9 were evolutionary from the DC-3. The DC-8 hydraulic system was remarkably similar - one main system with two engine driven pumps, a stand pipe and an aux pump. It even had a manual, non-boosted elevator. The DC-4, 6 and 7 all had non-boosted controls. The Connie had hydraulicly boosted surfaces. The electrical system was very complicated. The operating economics of the Douglas airplanes was always better than the Connie. Don't even ask about the Boeing Stratocruiser!

This carried over into the jet age. The L-188 Electra (my favorite airliner I never got to fly, although I rode in Braniff and National Electras as a kid) was a great machine once the unfortunate whirl-mode flutter was fixed - had its systems based on the C-130, a military design. The L-1011 always had a reputation as being maintainence intensive, much more so than the DC-10.

At World Airways where I flew in the early 80s, I was told that they could accomplish a DC-8 heavy check in a little over half the time required for a 707. All those cables and pulleys
versus electric controls on the Boeings seemed to take less time to inspect and/or replace.

My vote is for the Douglas products. With the exception of the DC-7, with it's complex Turbo-Compund Wrights (some Connies had them too) from the DC-3 to the DC-10 they go on for years past their original design life. The NW DC-9 and UPS DC-8 fleet are good examples. DC-6s and 4s are still out there earning their keep, while the flyable Connies are
museum operated.

No. There are only about 36 or so airframes left that are in "flying" condition, and spares would be next to impossible to secure.

Also, the avionics package on the aircraft would need a major upgrade in order to fly in today's radar controlled airspace or across any body of water. With less than 50 frames and the cost of that being well over $1M each...well, I think you get the point.

The L-1011 is gone. Let us hope that they don't all get chopped up for the salvage bin.